The Call Is Coming From Inside the Townhouse

Within minutes of meeting her, I learned she was clairvoyant, partially vegan, a Sagittarius rising, and had just inherited millions from a deceased relative.

My kind of crazy. 

After seeing five or six places, we finally arrived at the apartment in the Village, the one that checked all her boxes. I was feeling confident. Then she took one step inside, froze, and walked straight out. 

“Grandma said run,” she whispered. 

Grandma, as it turned out, was also the late relative who’d left her the inheritance to buy the apartment. It was now clear who the real decision-maker was, from beyond the pale. 

‘As-was’ condition 

New York is an old city. People have been coming here for hundreds of years to make it, or die trying. 

And, especially if you’re looking at prewar, you can assume at least a couple of people have lived and died there over the last hundred years. Everyone leaves something behind. A scratch on the floor, a height mark on a doorframe, a notch on the bedpost, and, sometimes, a piece of themselves. 

Ghost stories abound. There’s Mickey the Sailor, said to haunt the nearly 200-year-old Ear Inn bar, whom a friend of mine claims once made a pass at her. There’s a building in Gramercy, once a maternity hospital and now luxury condos, where residents swear they hear babies crying in the middle of the night. And then there’s John Lennon, whose ghost is said to haunt the Dakota. Just to name a few. 

I have another client who refuses to live anywhere near Greenwich Village because of the estimated 20,000 bodies still buried beneath Washington Square Park. Before it was a park, it was a potter’s field for the poor, the unidentified, and victims of the yellow fever epidemics. Many of the bones are still there. 

No matter what you believe, every property comes with its own energy, supernatural or not. And plenty of buildings have their own lore and legends. Legally, New York sellers aren’t required to disclose that a property is allegedly haunted. Nor are they required to do anything about it. 

Especially if the contract stipulates “as-is” condition. Or, in this case, “as-was.” 

Of course, the best ghost stories always seem to involve townhouses. And I have one of my own. 

The call is coming from inside the townhouse. 

It was a brand-new, developer-built townhouse on the Upper East Side. Crisp, modern, ground-up construction. No history. No lingering spirits. 

Or so we thought. 

The showings all followed a similar pattern. Buyers loved the house until we went down to the cellar. Then the energy shifted, and they couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The cellar was staged as a home gym, and not everyone likes Peloton, but this seemed a little dramatic. 

After every showing, I’d lock up carefully. Lights off. Doors secured. Everything checked. Still, the seller would call later to say the garden doors were open. Or a basement light had been left on.

I started to suspect a squatter. We set up cameras. Nothing. Maybe bad wiring? During daytime showings, we’d also hear children playing. I assumed it was recess at a nearby school and thought nothing of it. 

Then, during an evening showing, a buyer asked me. “Where’s the laughter coming from?” 

“There’s a school nearby,” I said. 

She raised an eyebrow. “At six o’clock at night?” 

The next day, I sent my colleague out to find the school. Turns out, there was no school. Not on that block. Not on the next block. Not anywhere close enough for us to be hearing children through the walls. 

The laughter was coming from inside the house. 

That night, I went down a Google and Wikipedia rabbit hole until I found it: The site of this shiny new, developer-built townhouse had once been home to an orphanage. That’s right, an orphanage. 

We immediately brought in an electrician to double-check the wiring, a contractor to look at the doors, and, just to be safe, a spiritual healer to sage the house. I wasn’t taking any chances. 

The house sold not long after. Proof, perhaps, that good staging, along with a little sage-ing, can move even a difficult listing.

Mike Fabbri is a residential real estate agent and founder of the Mike Fabbri Team at The Agency.